Which of these national championship columns is best?

I want to preface this, before I read these articles, by saying that I greatly enjoy the work of all five writers, but I do have my biases. And going in, I am expecting Dan Wetzel and Dana O'Neil to have the best columns because they're brilliant in event coverage. Jeff Goodman and Mike DeCourcy shine in their dilligent reporting and day-to-day coverage of college basketball. And Mark Kriegel is an excellent "voice" columnist who can take strong stances on subjects. All five can write, though. And I'm going to try to wipe those expectations from my mind now that I've typed them out.

O'Neil: The lede threw me. It seemed off-kilter and out of the moment. But she went big. She wrote big, too. It would take a week to read all the stories, blog posts and columns ESPN churned out about the national championship in the 24 hours after the game ended. But if O'Neil's column was all you read from the Kentucky perspective, you were well-served. She covered the victory in the broadest sense. If I were editing the piece, I might have asked for a tighter approach. But again, this was the top story on ESPN.com a few hours after the game ended, so the completist content makes sense. She wrapped back to the lede well for the kicker, but I still don't think it quite hit the big note the rest of the column did. But there were many nice nuggets, and she struck a good balance between game analysis, big-picture analysis and colorful detail.

Goodman: I enjoyed this column because it never imposed anything on the reader. It was game analysis with some projections to the future. It didn't avoid the big picture, but it kept its focus on Anthony Davis. Goodman knows basketball, and his analysis was smart. His writing was a bit clunky, heavy with clauses and unnecessary em dashes. The lede was perhaps too verbose; the kicker was forced. The column was structured well, though. Thoughts connected cohesively and his points were salient. One thing I have to compliment: He used quotes expertly. He used the right mix of his own quotes and quotes from news conferences, and he staggered them appropriately. I'm not sure this was the right column to promote the night of the game. It was more a sidebar, and it avoided big-picture context. I might have swapped Gregg Doyel's column into this spot and had Goodman's column as the No. 2.

DeCourcy: It's easy to be swept up in athletes' and coaches' interactions with media, but often it doesn't mean much. I didn't like DeCourcy's lede because it told us John Calipari's answer was rehearsed, then continue talking about it as though it had been genuine. Once you get past the first few paragraphs and Jim Nantz's arbitrary role, though, the column picks up. DeCourcy leads this field in Final Fours covered, and he showed that institutional knowledge well without letting his column become muddled in the past. I particularly liked the Rashad McCants line at the end, which was a bit prickly but made a valid point. The tone of his column fit the game well, and he hit many key points. I prefer his long paragraphs, too. I wasn't crazy about his quote choices, though, and the kicker had the same authenticity issues as the lede.

Wetzel: It's not surprising this column has been most discussed in this thread. The lede is brilliant, and that uncomfortableness you felt, IJAG, is exactly why it's brilliant. (Of course, you know that.) The message is well-delivered and accurate. I lean toward Alma's perspective that Wetzel is repeating himself here, but he does it better here than he had in the past. That raises a question: Who are your readers: your Twitter followers who hold on to every word or stray Yahoo! e-mail users who land on your column when they start their browsers? It's probably one for another day. Back to the column: Wetzel got a bit repetitive even within this one column. It was too long for its content, a product of the infinite space of the Internet and a decade of writing for this medium. But my biggest complaint is that, starkly unlike Wetzel's amazing post-Super Bowl column on Tom Brady, too much of this could have been written before the game. Much of it probably was. I don't think it serves the purpose of the lead post-game column for a major website because it barely touches on the game. Spinning ahead is nice, but in its own odd way, this spun ahead through old thinking. The writing was very good, but I was a little disappointed. I worry my standards for Wetzel are coloring my view on his work.

Kriegel: I want to apologize to Kriegel for misspelling his name in the OP. Then again, his column had a number of sloppy errors, more than the other columns. Perhaps we can agree to forgive each other. Kriegel attacked the game at face value for the most part. He led with game action, followed with game action and slipped into big-picture analysis only in the context of game action. That could be part of not being a particularly regular college basketball writer, but I didn't mind it at all. As the last column I read, this one provided a nice change of pace. The writing, save for those errors ("who" missing in the Self quote, saying senior Darius Miller will declare for the draft, saying Michael Kidd-Gilchrist is a guard, etc.), was very nice. Kriegel can really turn a phrase, which is why his non-deadline work shines. I was disappointed that he ended on five consecutive quotes, though. I don't like stacking quotes, particularly from different speakers, and this was not an effective decision. I know what he was going for, but I don't think he realized it.

This was a really tough decision. Each column comes with its flaws, but none was anything close to bad. I enjoyed all five, and each brought something unique to the table. DeCourcy and O'Neil wrote similar columns differently, and the others all went their own directions. On merit only of the words, taken out of context, Wetzel had the best column. But the play it received, the timing of publication and his similar recent columns knocked it down a notch or two. Goodman's was the most focused, but it didn't fit what I would consider ideal for the main story of the night. The other three went with broader strokes, and I thought O'Neil succeeded best, even though she may have had the worst lede of the bunch.

I would be happy to publish any of those columns, though, and this round of "Who wrote it best?" was more enjoyable than previous ones because the quality was higher.

 

I love Gary Shelton's column, and Dan Wolken's column is good. But I really wanted to stress an even playing field and a specific set of criteria: You run a top sports website, it's 3:30 a.m. and you need to pick which national championship game column to run as your top story. The five I chose were all given that task.